Martin County Fire Rescue Firefighter Jahwann McIntyre laughs while talking to members of the media April 19, 2013, in his room in the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. McIntyre spent 6 months in the hospital and another year on bed rest after being burned over 40% of his body. He was on the job as a firefighter when he was burned.(Photo: ALEX BOERNER/TCPALM)

Today, he's a Palm Beach Gardens firefighter-paramedic — his dream job — and a dirt biking enthusiast whose Facebook page is plastered with action shots of him jumping earthen ramps and rounding tight corners. And he has a message for Layne:

Stay strong.

“It was quite a long road for me. And there were many times I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to give up," McIntyre told TCPalm this week. “I think she can beat it. She’s bigger and better than what happened to her. I don’t know her, but I’ve been through it.”

Layne, 14, suffered third-degree burns over 95 percent of her body New Year's Eve when she poured gasoline on a fading bonfire and the gas can exploded. She was flown to Kendall Regional Medical Center in Miami, which specializes in burn treatment.

Doctors are "cautiously optimistic" she will fully recover after spending the next year in the hospital, Layne's mother, Leigh Chesney, told TCPalm Jan. 3.

Young adults with burns this severe, statistically, have about a 30 percent chance of survival, said Dr. Basil Pruitt, a surgery professor at the University of Texas Health and Science Center at San Antonio, who specializes in burn treatment.

Advances in modern medicine have increased those odds since the 1980s.

“Thirty years ago, if you had a burn over 80 percent (of your body), you died," said Dr. Roger Salisbury, a Massachusetts surgeon and former American Burn Association director who now works as a consultant and expert witness for burn-related cases.

Burn treatment

Advances in how surgeons replace lost skin are particularly responsible for doubling victims' chances of survival in the past 70 years, Pruitt said.

When someone suffers a third-degree burn to a small part of their body, doctors remove a portion of the patient's healthy skin and graft it to the burn site. But when there's not enough healthy skin, doctors can send a sample to a lab to grow more. It can take as little as an inch sample and a couple weeks' time, Salisbury said.

In the meantime, doctors remove the charred skin and graft cadaver skin to reduce the chance of the patient becoming dehydrated or infected. The body eventually will reject the skin implant, so it's just a temporary measure.

“Your body initially does not know it’s foreign skin," Salisbury said, because the immune system is so suppressed after an injury of Layne's magnitude, which Salisbury likened to "getting hit with a baseball bat 25 times."

Layne Chesney, 14, was severely burned in a bonfire accident on New Year's Eve.(Photo: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BY LAURYN CHESNEY)

Doctors may have to remove the rejected skin and replace it with new cadaver skin several times until the lab-grown skin is ready to graft, Pruitt said. Many hospitals with burn units keep a "skin bank" of frozen donations for this purpose.

Layne was receiving skin grafts from a cadaver, her mother told TCPalm Jan. 3, but the specific details of the procedure are unclear.

“It’s gonna be a long hard slog for this child," he said. "A burn really disturbs every organ in the body."

Physical therapy

Once Layne is released from the hospital, she likely will have to undergo physical therapy, which McIntyre remembers being just as painful as the burn treatment.

“Once she gets out of the hospital, it doesn’t end there," he said. "That’s something I found out when my accident happened."

The pain started to ebb as he neared the end of his physical therapy, he said. Today, burn scars on his chin, hands, feet, thighs and abdomen don't cause him any pain, and he hasn't taken any medication for his condition for years, he said.

“Day to day, I feel great," McIntyre said. "I’ve accepted who I am and the scars I have.”

Emotional recovery

Once a burn wound has closed, people have a tendency to think the survivor has fully recovered, but that's often just the beginning, said Jess Irven, a therapist at the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors. The Michigan-based nonprofit, named for the mythical bird that rises from its ashes, is the country's leading burn survivor advocacy group.

Especially for survivors as young as Layne, accepting their appearance and coping with stresses and insecurities make the process all the more difficult, Irven said. Recovery is different for every survivor, but the most important factor in social and emotional recovery is having a strong support system, Irven and other experts agreed.

“The healing journey is different emotionally, socially (and) physically for everyone, but those impacts are going to be lifelong, especially at each different life stage and developmental stage," Irven said.

The internet has been a game-changer for burn survivors in small communities, where they often are they only ones, said James January, a burn survivor and editor of burnsurvivor.org. Survivors share their stories and organize charity events on his blog.

"The beauty of the internet is they can get that advice from other people their age," said January, who suffered burns over 85 to 90 percent of his body in a 1991 truck accident.

CLOSE

Billie Eilish sent a video with words of encouragement to Layne Chesney.
VIDEO CONTRIBUTED BY LAURYN CHESNEY

At first, January coped with his burns by volunteering at a nearby North Carolina burn center and by lecturing medical students.

But once he was able to do physical tasks, he got his pilot's license. He started skydiving. He bought a Harley-Davidson.

He encourages people to not assume a burn survivor won't be able to do the things they loved before their injury. For Layne, that was softball, a sport in which she was one of the area's top young players.

"There's one-handed golfers. There’s people who do amazing things when they put their minds to it," January said. “Don’t let anyone set your goals for you.”

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Layne Chesney, #6 on the Lincoln Park Academy softball team, was burned over 95% of her body on Sunday, Dec. 31, 2017, at a bonfire in Fort Pierce. This picture was taken on April 4, 2017, at the Lawnwood Softball Complex in Fort Pierce during a game against Martin County High School.(Photo: JEREMIAH WILSON/TCPALM)

Bonfire safety

“Obviously, its an anomaly, but we read news reports every year about people being injured or killed at bonfires. It’s just one momentary lapse in judgment and you have a tragedy on your hands," said St. Lucie County Fire Chief Nate Spera, who offered this bonfire safety advice. “We’re all still praying for this kid.”